Your partner’s credit score reveals red flags that have nothing to do with money

Love & Money is a MarketWatch series looking at how our relationship with money impacts our relationships with significant others, friends and family.

Many new couples inquire about a potential mate’s age or how many previous partners they’ve had. Others are more interested in another number.

Approximately 42% of adults say knowing someone’s credit score would affect their willingness to date that person, according to a recent survey of 1,000 adults by personal finance website Bankrate.com. That’s up from nearly 40% last year. Women were nearly three times as likely to consider credit score a major influence on a potential partner compared to men (20% versus 7%). Younger daters are not as concerned about these three digits: 45% of older millennials, defined here as those aged 27 to 36, said they care about these three digits.

Credit scores reveal an individual’s relationship skill and level of commitment, and trustworthiness.

This can be useful for people using dating sites like Tinder, Bumble, OKCupid

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and Match.com. A high credit score can help predict whether someone is trustworthy. Similar credit scores are “highly predictive” of whether couples stay together, according to another 2015 paper by researchers at UCLA, the Brookings Institution and Federal Reserve Board, Washington, D.C. “Initial credit scores and match quality predict subsequent credit usage and financial distress, which in turn are correlated with relationship dissolution,” they wrote. “Credit scores reveal an individual’s relationship skill and level of commitment.”

Also see: Women don’t see men who drive flashy cars as husband material

“Previous studies have documented the various traits by which individuals sort themselves into committed…